Your life insurance policy will pay death benefits to your beneficiaries if you die from a car accident, drowning, poisoning, accidental drug overdose, or other tragedy. Both life insurance and accidental death insurance can cover an accidental drug overdose in some scenarios. While life insurance covers most causes of death, accidental death coverage only pays for accidents. People who buy accidental death coverage often think that this type of insurance covers any accident as long as the person hasn't died from natural causes.
But this is not always the case. Nearly all ADD policies include several exclusions. Exclusions are provisions in a contract that are intended to exclude certain deaths from coverage and, if applied, will result in the denial of an ADD claim. Life insurance policies do cover overdose deaths.
Life insurance companies can deny coverage if they can prove that the drug overdose was deliberate (suicide) or that the insured used illegal drugs or abused prescription drugs. Unfortunately, alcohol or drug use is one of the most common reasons why insurance claims are denied. Accidental death insurance policies generally DO NOT cover death or injuries caused by illegal drug use. Life insurers will pay the policy's death benefit, even if the insured's death was due to a drug or alcohol overdose.
Accidental death insurance, on the other hand, often only pays if the death was caused by an accident, and none of the exclusions apply. Failure to disclose marijuana use in a life insurance application could be considered a misrepresentation and result in a denied life insurance claim if the insured dies within the first two years of the policy's issuance date. If it's within the first two years, you should be able to prove that the drug overdose was accidental (which is easier if the medication was prescribed). If the insured does not disclose this information, there is a possibility that the policy will not be valid and useless if they die as a result of engaging in a hazardous activity, such as drug use.
It depends on whether the circumstances of the death show that the death was accidental or that the death was a suicide, as well as on the exclusions from the insured's policy. The toxicology report generally shows substances that were found in the insured's body at the time of death. However, insured persons must still report any harmful or risky activities they've been involved in before purchasing coverage. And life insurance companies almost always conduct investigations after drug overdose deaths, so lies and misrepresentations are inevitably discovered.
There are many other factors that need to be considered before deciding whether the death falls under the accidental death exclusion. Therefore, additional accidental death and dismemberment insurance policies and provisions DO NOT usually cover drug overdose.
